Ferguson on boil again after white cops are shot at

BY A STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Simmering tensions returned to the small Missouri town of Ferguson amid a massive manhunt for the shooter of two white police officers during a demonstration over a blistering official report overseen by Indian American attorney Vanita Gupta on police abuse and racial bias.

Several Ferguson officials, including police chief Thomas Jackson, have resigned after a Department of Justice report found a pattern of racially-biased policing in the city where a white police officer had shot dead an unarmed black teenager last August.

One of the officers was shot in the shoulder and another in the face at around midnight local time on March 11 outside Ferguson police headquarters, as protests began to wind down, the police said March 12.

Both officers survived and were released from the hospital the evening of March 12 and a manhunt was under way for suspects.

A $10,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the arrests of the shooter or shooters.

On the evening of March 12, a group of clergy and demonstrators lit candles and held a prayer vigil not far from the police station.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called the shooting a “disgusting and cowardly attack” carried out by “a damn punk.”

“Ferguson’s perverted system of justice is not unique in the county,” said the New York Times citing the Justice Department’s top civil rights prosecutor, acting Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta.

Gupta, it noted, had pointed out that “Ferguson is one dot in the state, and there are many municipalities in the region engaged in the same practices a mile away.”

In a similar vein, the Washington Post asked “why are protesters still so angry” when “reforms are slowly emerging in Ferguson.”

Meanwhile, according to the Associated Press, Gupta spoke in Birmingham, Ala., on civil rights issues and an outreach program that the department recently announced.

University of Alabama at Birmingham officials said Gupta spoke at a community forum at the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts and discussed federal efforts to protect civil liberties and rights of minorities and immigrants before participating in a question and answer period.

Gupta worked for the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP before taking on her role as the top civil rights prosecutor for the Department of Justice.